Massachusetts State Bird: Black-capped Chickadee

Massachusetts did not arrive at the chickadee as the only obvious answer. Through the 1930s, the veery had a real case — it is a forest thrush with a distinctive, spiraling call, and the conversation around it had reached public discussion by 1937, including a notice in The New Yorker that summer. But the veery is a migratory bird that leaves the Northeast in autumn.

By 1941, the Commonwealth chose something that stayed. The black-capped chickadee is a year-round resident across Massachusetts — present in towns, parks, woodlots, and backyards through January and February, when a migratory state bird would be somewhere in Central America.

A state bird has more symbolic use when people can actually encounter it. Massachusetts winters are long and strip the landscape of most species. The chickadee remained — recognizable by its black cap and bib, and by the two-note call that gives the bird its name — making it a working emblem rather than a seasonal reminder.

Maine had already designated the same species in 1927. That overlap doesn't diminish the Massachusetts logic; the two states independently arrived at the same practical answer. The chickadee is the right bird for a long New England winter, regardless of which state noticed first.